The Armor of God (03/08/2020)

Wow, got to the bottom of the rung here, ran out of preachers, threw everybody he could and said,

I guess it's going to have to be Dave, so here I am. I'm very, very nervous to be honest.

Anytime I'm asked to share God's word, I feel a burden of, I need to do it perfectly, right?

And so, good luck, right? And I know that it's a seemingly impossible task, so I just pray the

Lord changes whatever I say in the air as it travels to you and it goes in your ears the way

He wants it to be heard. So, would you please turn with me to Ephesians 6, going to be in verses 10 through 18.

So I'll read this first. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the

Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the

Spirit, which is the word of God. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the

Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.

Let's start at verse 18 and begin with prayer, shall we? Heavenly Father, Lord, we just thank you for your word.

We thank you that it's truth and that it's never changing. Lord, we thank you that you fully equip us for the battle.

May we recognize that it truly is a battle. Would you please put in our minds the seriousness of this battle?

Help us to prepare diligently for the battle, and when the battle comes, help us to perform optimally.

Lord, we thank you that we are not in this battle alone, but that you are with us. You are surrounding us.

You are in us. You fight for us and with us. And so, Lord, we thank you that this battle is already won, because you've already told us it is.

Help us learn to fight as if it is. We thank you for this word today.

We pray that we learn a lot from it. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I've been doing these devos at Tradeway for a little while now, and they've been better for me than they have been for Tradeway.

They've been very good for me. And I've bounced around from topics of love to confidence to being and doing and having the

Christian faith requires of us. And I got in the mood for an action story.

And so I said, I'm going to go read about Gideon. And so I began reading about the action story in Gideon, and it prompted me, as the word of God often will prompt you to go places, it prompted me to explore my own action story.

My own spiritual battle. And so I've been learning about what that spiritual battle requires.

Have you ever watched an action movie? All right. We've watched like these war movies and stuff, right?

You can always tell who's in battle, right? They don't look like your average citizen.

They always have a uniform. They have garments of war about them.

If they're superheroes, they've got their cape and their shields and their superpowers.

If they're army men, they've got their guns and their helmets. If they're gladiators, they've got their swords and their shields.

They all have garments of war. One of the things that has struck me about these verses is that it very much depicts a very intense battle.

And as I studied Gideon, we saw that Gideon raised an army of close to 30 ,000 men for the

Lord. And the Lord said, I don't need that many. Let's do fewer. And so he gave

Gideon instructions to reduce his army. And the instructions he followed brought him down to only 300 men.

And they were camped against the host of the Midianites that were so vast, the camels couldn't even be numbered.

That's a big army. And it reminded me that there was a movie that came out back in,

I think, the 90s. It was called The 300, about the Spartans. There were only 300 of them.

Now I know where the story originated, right? And it was this story of these men who went up against impossible odds.

And they fought tooth and nail, fought valiantly. They were very skilled warriors. And what's interesting about the story of Gideon is that these warriors were also very skilled.

And the Lord actually, we have so many times when we read about what

God does in our lives, he usually goes for the unskilled, right? We think of Moses, who had the speech impediment.

And we think of little David, right? Fighting Goliath, the ones who seem like the underdogs.

But when God told Gideon it's time to pare down the army, he actually had him keep the most skilled, the ones who were watchful, the ones who didn't lap up the water with their faces in the river, but rather brought the water up to their faces.

And I must be blurry for you, Marianne. I'm sorry. I'm, what do they call it in school?

ADD? It's a terrible phrase. I think they should call it ECA. It's extra creative ability.

I think that's what it is. I have the ability to look around and think while I'm talking. But here's

Gideon. And he's instructed 300 men, but they were skilled.

And even though they were skilled, here's what's hilarious. They didn't fight. At least not at first.

God brought them up against the host of the Midianites and gave each of them a trumpet and a pot with a lamp in it.

Those are not necessarily tools of war, but the

Lord knew what he was doing. And so the Israelites, only 300 of them, go up against impossible odds, and the

Lord did the fighting for them. But they had to be prepared. They had to be ready.

Otherwise, they were sent home. And that's the same for us, is that we have this great battle that we are a part of whether we like it or not.

It is affecting our lives whether we like it or not. We just get to choose if we're going to go and fight in the battle or if we're going to be sent home and not partake in the glory of victory.

And so the Lord tells us that we should fight. We should prepare.

But in order to do so, we've got to have this thing called the armor of God, which is pretty stinking cool if you ask me.

I mean, if I was going to wear armor, I wouldn't want the superhero capes. I wouldn't want the

Gatlin guns or the Excalibur swords. I would want the armor of God.

I mean, that sounds the best, doesn't it? So as we look at the armor of God, I want to look at the importance of it.

Why do we need the armor of God? Turn with me to Ephesians chapter 2, verse 2, please.

Wherein time passed, ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.

This is our enemy that it's talking about. This is Lucifer. This is Satan, the devil.

Satan is a spiritual foe. He has the power of deceit, which has been evident since the

Garden of Eden. He lies, he steals, he kills, and he destroys, which is to say he utterly renders useless his victims.

He is thousands of years old and has in all this time been singularly focused on defeating you.

He wants you dead, and if he can't have you dead, he wants you useless. He will use any means necessary.

He has perfected his craft and planned out his attack. He is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

He believes that he stood up to the Almighty God and lived to tell about it.

Therefore, he is confident in his rebellion and determined in his mission. His mission is to obliterate

God's people, and he's succeeding. There have been over 500

Christians abducted for ransom in the last four years in Africa alone.

Christians are becoming the target for abductions worldwide. Satan is stealing us.

He comes to steal. On February 20th, Podiaty, an

Indian evangelist, left his home for work and returned to find his mother, his wife, and his 11 -month -old son beaten nearly to death.

They are fighting for their lives in a hospital today. This story is not uncommon.

According to the Open Doors 2019 World Watch List, this is a watch list that tracks current martyrdom.

Is that how you say that word? Martyrdom? In America and the whole world.

They track worldwide martyrdom. They report that 11 Christians are killed for their faith every single day.

That's over 4 ,000 a year. Satan is killing us. But stealing and killing is not the biggest problem we have.

It has been reported that 68 % of Christian men and 50 % of pastors view pornographic material on a regular basis.

That is most Christian men. 20 % of Christian women report being addicted to it as well.

That's one in five women. One in three Christian marriages end in divorce.

50 % of Christians believe homosexuality should be accepted. It's estimated, based on past data, that one in four women and one in seven men will experience domestic violence by their intimate partner at some point in their lives.

Satan is rendering us useless. He is destroying us, and that, my friends, is the big problem.

Would you agree? I mean, if he steals us and he kills us, ultimately where do we go?

We get to go be with him. It's got a happy ending. But if he renders us useless, then our time on earth is not as powerful as it should be.

Yes, we can still go to heaven. We can be saved as yet by fire, by the skin of our teeth.

But we're supposed to fight. We're supposed to make a difference. We're supposed to be a salt and light unto the world.

And yet, we're being rendered useless because of sin. In Scripture, we see that a single angel can bring groups of men to their knees in fear.

And in the world of angels, there's a hierarchy. There are angels and archangels and super archangels.

Satan was the most high angel. Top dog, so to speak. Charged with covering the very holiness of God.

When he was cast down, he took a third of the heavenly host with him. Which means this enemy that we face is not only vastly powerful, he has an organized army of fallen angels at his disposal.

And he's coming after you and after me. How powerful is he?

Even Michael the archangel, in Jude 1 verse 9, Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said,

The Lord rebuke thee. So even Michael the archangel recognized that he needed to lean on Christ to defeat this enemy.

So when God says put on the whole armor of God that you may withstand the wiles of the devil, you better believe that the entire armor is actually needed.

Because without it, you don't stand a chance. Not against old Lucifer.

But as if that wasn't enough, Satan, in all his might and evil power, is only one of three enemies that you have to combat.

There's the world system, which Satan uses to attack you with. And we know how vast that is.

The world system surrounds us daily. It is on our phones, it is on the computer, it's on the billboards as you drive down the street.

It is on the radio. It is in the church, in the schools. The world system is all around us.

We know how easy it is to be lured by its many shiny objects and its lusty promises of pleasure.

But what's more is we are also incarcerated in a body of flesh. That old man that rears our ugly past and tries to tempt us towards sin, that we may be made useless to God.

We have an impossible task ahead of us. We are like the 300 standing on the side of the hill looking down at the host of the

Midianites. Gideon was scared. We see in the story that God said, if you're scared, go down with this person,

I never remember, Farah. I think that's how you say it. I'll have to look it up, I don't have it in my notes.

Go down with Farah and I will tell you what will happen. So the very next verse says that Gideon went down with Farah, which tells you he was scared.

Because he was supposed to do that if he was. So Gideon was fearful. He goes down with Farah and he is given the interpretation of a vision.

One of his friends had a vision saying that you're going to win this fight. This battle is won.

And this gave Gideon confidence. He knew that he was operating within truth and he went into battle with confidence.

He went from being scared to coming back and telling his men the battle is won, let's go.

And I think that's pretty cool. But if we're going to win our battle, we have a whole lot of preparation to do, as Gideon had to.

He had an army. His army had to prepare for war. They were dressed for war. And then they had to walk in the mission that they were given.

And so do we. We have to do the same. And so, let's begin looking at the armor of God.

This stuff is really cool to me. We watched a cartoon the other day at the theater.

It was called Onward, one of Disney's new movies. And it's a cute little cartoon about a couple of brothers.

And one of the brothers is big into board games. And a lot of board games have might and magic and special items and things of that nature that you collect in your quest.

I've always been intrigued by these things. Because, I mean, I went to a college in which we had a lot of people that loved these kind of board games.

And I went to Laterno University. And board games are considered a nerdy thing to do.

Well, there were no shortage of nerds at Laterno University. If you went to Laterno, you count, you're a nerd.

You know, right? And so, I was a nerd. A lot of my friends, way nerdier than myself though, they got into these games where there was might and magic and special items.

And as I read through the armor of God, it sounds a lot like the items that you'd pick up in a game.

And it just made it interesting to me. This is no game, mind you. This is real life.

This is realer than real life. This is spiritual real life. So the consequences are much more dire.

It's way more important that we get this one right and that we win this mission. But it does make it interesting.

It makes it fun. The belt of truth. Now tell me that doesn't sound awesome.

The belt of truth. Okay, so we're back in Ephesians. Chapter 6.

We get to see this belt. And it says, Wherefore taken to you the whole armor of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand.

Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness.

The original purpose of a belt was for war. We use it now, and I'm using one right now to hold my pants up.

That's much less glorious. But back in the time that this scripture was written, men didn't wear pants.

Everyone wore dresses. Called a tunic. Right? And so you didn't need the belt for holding up the pants.

But what the belt was for, was for going into war. It brought the tunic in.

It brought everything in. So that when you fought in battle, no one could do the hockey move on you and pull the tunic up over your head.

That would be very difficult to be fighting. And all of a sudden maybe a gust of wind comes up and everything is seen.

And now the war is over for you because you've been thrust through by someone else's sword. So the belt was supremely important because it gave you the ability to go into war.

But it didn't just give you the ability, it also gave you that purpose. You didn't wear a belt unless you were going into war.

The belt served a few purposes. Not only did it bring everything in, bring it in close where you became more mobile and you became able to fight.

It also bare your weapons. Your sword would be sheathed on your belt.

Your trophies. Your status as a soldier was also portrayed on the belt with medals or whatever other signia,

I guess is the word I'm looking for. Whatever signia you would use to say I have been to battle.

I have performed in battle. I've performed well in battle. Maybe notches on the belt for kills.

And these are things that the belt represented. But it was all having to do with war. So we're first told that we are supposed to stand having our loins girt about with truth.

Now what's interesting here is that we have the word having. Which means it's already on. You got to have that on.

And that prepares you for battle. Or at least in part. This belt is a belt of truth.

Now, truth is important for many reasons. Because without it you don't know how to operate.

This belt gives you purpose. If you put it on, you're expected to battle.

You're expected to be warred against. And you're expected to make war against others.

If you have this belt on, you are a target. And yet we're told that we're supposed to have it on.

And the fact that it says having it on instead of putting it on means it should be on.

It should always be on. Any soldier who is ready for war is already dressed for war.

Even if he's not yet battling. So we should have our belt around us.

And it says a belt of truth. Now I was in martial arts for the better part of 12 years.

I learned Shaolin Jiu Jitsu. I remember the day that I got to start.

I told my mom and my dad I want to be Bruce Lee. That's what I really wanted. I wanted to be

Bruce Lee. I saw this guy fighting on TV and man was he cool. He could attack and defend against hordes of people.

So mom and dad being afraid of the far eastern religion that is often taught with the martial arts.

They took me from place to place looking for a place for me to learn how to defend myself.

And we ended up at this itty bitty tiny place called Self Defense International. Sounds huge. It's probably about as big as this room here.

Not very big at all. And mom walked in. She saw the instructor in the dojo.

And he's got this beard. Big black man with his legs crossed.

He's got a goatee bald head. And he's in the dojo with his eyes closed. And he's got his hands on his knees.

And mom says oh I think he's meditating. I think that man's meditating. Well he gets up and comes out and begins to talk with us.

And he's from the Bahamas. He says yes ma 'am what can I do for you? My mom says hi my name's

Gene Huber and this is my son David. You know this guy he looks scary to me.

He had the coolest looking belt though. It was white with black and red and gold.

All these different colors. I thought it was so awesome. Later on in life I asked him what it meant.

He said it's just a professor belt. No big deal. And this man says what can

I do for you? My mom says well my son would like to learn karate. We don't teach karate here.

Well what do you teach? Shaolin Jiu Jitsu. What's that? It's like karate.

So she says well I have a couple of questions for you. I looked in there and it looked like you were meditating.

Were you meditating in there? Now if you guys know my mom and I know most of y 'all do. You know that this was not just a sheepish thing.

Mom is, she's always been a little fiery about the things of the spirit.

I know you've read her Facebook posts. Like mom, she's going to get it done.

And she went straight to the heart of the matter. Were you meditating? The guy turns to her and says yes ma 'am

I was meditating. Well what were you meditating on? He pulls out a

Bible. Meditate on the Lord thy God daily for this is right. I started

Jiu Jitsu. And because I was in Jiu Jitsu all of a sudden this thing called the belt became a very important thing to me.

All of a sudden I wanted the next belt. I was a white belt. I wanted yellow. I was a yellow belt.

I wanted green. Green to orange. Orange to purple. Purple to brown. Brown to black and black to red.

That's the way it goes and I was going to go through them. Because it gave me a sense of accomplishment.

But there were other things much more important than the accomplishment that I felt through earning belts.

It was learning how to use a belt. See a belt was used not only to kind of keep that gi in tight but it was also used as a point of leverage.

This was your center. It represented your center of gravity. You had to be aware of where your center of gravity was at all times.

And when you were fighting an opponent you always wanted to get him off of his belt line. Off of his center.

If you wanted to throw an opponent you had to leverage him at his belt line. If you wanted to pick him up you had him at his belt line.

You had to get down below the belt and lift with the legs. The belt gives leverage.

That is to say it loans power. And we are to wear a belt of truth. And truth will give power to your mission.

If you're going to have this mission you have to recognize that you need power to do it.

The belt of truth. We move on to the breastplate of righteousness.

This one sounds pretty cool too. Now if you're going into war and you were only allowed to take one piece of armor which one would you want to take?

I think probably the biggest piece, right? And that would be the breastplate.

If you could only take one piece of armor you would grab the breastplate first because that's the piece of armor that's going to protect your vital organs.

That's the piece that's going to keep you from the most harm. You could get cut on the arm or cut on the leg and maybe continue to fight but if you get shoved through in your vital organs you're done.

Righteousness. It is the most important.

Turn with me to Ephesians 2

Corinthians 7 .1. Let me see if I've got that right here. 2

Corinthians 7 .1. Yes. Having therefore these promises dearly beloved let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

We are supposed to be holy and this is the fight. This is the battle.

If we're going into battle we've got to be holy and in order to be holy we've got to have this breastplate of righteousness.

You are dead without righteousness. You are dead.

You might want to fight. You might want to get in the game. You might want to take up the sword and attack but if you don't have a breastplate of righteousness you're dead in the water.

You're one of the first to go down. So this is one part in particular that has been very very important for me and that is to see that it's ultimately important that we pursue righteousness.

We've got to be holy. That's what sets us apart, right? That's what holy means. Be ye holy for I am holy.

I want to move over to Isaiah real quick. Let me see if I can remember where that is because this just popped in my mind.

Once in a while I'll read in Isaiah Let's see.

Breastplate of righteousness. Ah yes.

Isaiah 59 17. So often when

I think of this armor I think of it as the thing that I need, right?

The thing that's for me. If I was as good as Jesus I wouldn't need this stuff, you know?

It wouldn't be as hard because I'd be God in the flesh. But Isaiah 59 17 tells a different story.

I'm going to go to 16 first. This is actually talking about the

Lord. And he saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no intercessor. Therefore his arm brought salvation unto him and his righteousness it sustained him.

For he put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation upon his head and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing and was clad with zeal as a cloak.

This is Jesus putting on the armor of God. If you don't think you need it, why would Jesus need it?

This is the one that we have failed at the most in the church as evidenced by the statistics that we read earlier.

We're not righteous anymore. We're not set apart. And it's because we have rested in grace to the point of we sin that grace may abound.

We've gotten to the point where we think it doesn't really matter and we've become apathetic towards the

Christian fight of holy righteous living. We've gotten to the point where I'm going to heaven anyway.

God will forgive me. We've even taken it to a more sinister level saying, you know, this is a test from God and I failed it.

Why did God test me if he knew I'd fail? But that's actually unscriptural because God does not tempt.

Satan tempts. And we look at temptation as tests from God and that's not true.

Temptations are Satan trying to throw us off our game. God tests with situations to see, will you trust me through a situation?

God does not put temptation as a part of that situation. That's Satan's job. Are you hurting for loved ones?

Are you stressed about work? Trust me in those situations.

That's God testing your faith. Is there a picture you shouldn't look at?

That's not God. That's not God saying, let's see if you obey me. That's Satan saying, you don't really need to obey.

God does not tempt. Satan tempts. And he is so crafty that he has tricked us into thinking it's

God at times and it's just not true. Now, one of the things that I think is interesting,

I've been listening to John MacArthur, also known as John Karpiak, from Sunday school this morning, right?

I've been listening to some of his stuff about the armor of God and he made a very good point that this righteousness that we are supposed to wear as a breastplate is not imputed righteousness.

This is not the righteousness that was given to us as a salvation righteousness that takes us to heaven.

How do we know this? Because we are instructed to put it on. We're instructed to have it on, which means there are times that we might not have it on.

And you can't take the imputed righteousness of God off of your life. Otherwise, you can miss heaven.

See, that's the thing that he credited to our account when he debited the sins out of our account.

He took the sins away. He put his righteousness on us. It sticks so sticky you can't get it off.

And so the scripture tells us no man can pluck us out of his hand. And when you read the voice of the scripture in there that says no man shall perish, that he has been given, that means we can't even make ourselves perish.

It's in what we call the middle voice. So no man can pluck you out of the Lord's hand, not even yourself.

Once you're his, you're his, period. And that's awesome. But see, then there's this other kind of righteousness.

And our righteousness is as filthy rags. Praise the Lord he put his righteousness on us so that that's what the

Father sees and we go to heaven. But then we are also instructed to have righteousness in our lives.

This is a righteousness that is imparted to us. God gives us the power to have this righteousness, to pursue this holiness, but we still have to walk in it.

We have to put it on. We have to put this breastplate on. And one of the pictures that John MacArthur used that I thought was so beautifully accurate was this breastplate of righteousness is easily unfastened.

It falls off so easily, which means in order to hold on to your breastplate and to be safe in this battle, you have to work to keep it on.

We know that the new man can never say that's cool.

New man can never sin. And I had this question for David once. I said, all right, if the new man can never sin, that means my spirit man, right?

He said, yes. I said, if I, if I'm filled with the spirit and I'm walking hand in hand with Jesus, it's impossible for me to sin.

Yes. He said, yes. I said, then how is it possible for me to get out of the spirit?

Isn't that in and of itself a sin? He said, you're right. And after much studying, much debating, we finally landed on the fact that we live in a fallen sinful world and that there is this thing called the second law of thermodynamics.

That when man sinned, everything headed towards disorder. And this includes our spiritual state before we were saved.

And it can include our spiritual state in the flesh. So when we are walking in the spirit, we have to exert energy to stay in the spirit.

Otherwise, if we get lazy, we will fall out of communion with God. We will tend towards the things of the earth because we're living in a fallen sinful flesh that is warring against us in a world system that is all against us run by the oldest, wisest serpent of a leader that has ever existed and ever will exist.

It's all against us. And the only way we can stay in the spirit is to really hold on tight to that breastplate.

Ephesians 1. So this is five chapters before our text this morning.

I was trying to get some context and I think this is really cool because in Ephesians 1, verses 17 through 23, we see that the

God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.

This is Paul praying for us. He prays that God will give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.

The eyes of your understanding being enlightened that ye may know what is the hope of his calling and what the riches of his glory of his inheritance in the saints.

And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.

We see here that, you know, we know that all of scripture points to Jesus.

But what I think is so cool about this is it's pointing to the Father. And it's saying that we should not only have a knowledge of him but we should have our eyes enlightened and know what the calling that the

Father gave us is and that we should know that the glory of the inheritance he has for us, what is that?

And the might of his power, what is that? The whole chapter points to the

Father and talks about his might, his power, how he used it in chapter 2 to save us from our sins and bring us in unity with Christ to him.

It's all about the power of the Father. The most almighty power that exists.

And we remember that God has not given us a spirit of fear but he's given us a spirit of power and of love and of sound mind.

Sound mind meaning the ability to control ourselves, self -control.

Now, I don't know that I'm going to get through all of the armors of God because this is taking some time but if you will, just turn with me to 1

Corinthians 16. Keep your finger on Ephesians 6. Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.

1 Corinthians 16 .13. We are supposed to stand fast.

We're supposed to be strong. We're supposed to be manly men and women who are godly women.

We are supposed to be powerful, firm, weak, not losing.

We know that when we put on the belt of truth, we have a purpose. We're supposed to fight. In order to fight, we must make sure that we are holy and righteous.

But now, we have this new piece of armor that we see in verse where is it here?

15. Verse 15 in Ephesians 6. And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

I call it the sandals of the gospel of peace. So when you had these men of war, these army men, walking into battle, the

Roman soldiers especially, which is who Paul was thinking of when he wrote this, the

Roman soldiers had these sandals that they would build out of a very tough leather and they would drive nails down through the leather and stand upon the leather so that the nails stuck down like football cleats.

And this gave them the ability to stand firm. So when they were attacked, they could use their shields and they could dig in and stand firm where they were and not lose ground.

The gospel of peace keeps you from losing ground. See, what this is is it's the good news.

It's what God has done for us. He loved us enough to die for our sins.

He credited his righteousness to us and put us in his stead so that we could go to heaven with him.

And I think that's awesome, right? But here's why we're supposed to know that. In fact, we're supposed to remind ourselves of that daily.

We should daily remind ourselves of the gospel of peace. We think of it as, well, I knew that, I learned that, and I'm saved.

Now I need to move on to other things. But it's actually one of the most powerful things that has happened in your life.

You know you have peace with God. So when you mess up, you don't have to lose ground.

You can stand firm and say, he made peace with me even on that one. Let's continue forward so that you don't have to lose ground.

You can stand firm and if the attacks happen, and they will, you don't even have to fail.

You can stand firm against them. So here I read, I've been reading this book and it's one that Raj Kripalani loaned to me.

It's called Grace. And it's the discipleship, it's a discipleship book.

It's designed to disciple you in the walk of faith.

And one of the things it talks about in there is reminding yourself of the gospel of truth every single morning.

Because if you'll do that, if you'll wake up in the morning and remind yourself of just the gospel story, Christ came from heaven to earth, lived a perfect life, died for my sins, he did it,

I couldn't, but he did. He made me perfect in the sight of the Father. We have peace with God.

Past, present, and future sins. I'm going to heaven. If you'll remind yourself of that, it makes it very difficult to sin for the rest of the day.

Because God did you every single morning and you'll find it much harder to sin. Because it's the first thing that'll come to your mind as soon as you try to sin.

The gospel of peace lets you stand firm. Now, we're supposed to have the belt.

We're supposed to have the breastplate of righteousness. We're also supposed to have the sandals of the gospel of peace.

But we then get to verse 16, above all, taking the shield.

Now, this is something we pick up. Taking the shield of faith wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

So the shield of faith, we often will think of the little shields we see when we're fighting, right?

We see these army movies, or better yet, the gladiator movies, where they have a round shield and it's kind of small.

And there were gladiators who always had a small shield and they would fight with their sword. And this small shield was attached to their arm and they could parry attacks.

Or we think of Captain America's shield, right, Sam? Captain America's shield is round, right?

But it's kind of small. The word for shield here is actually not a small shield.

It's an oblong -shaped, like four -foot shield. So now, I want you to instead picture those really old war movies with the gladiators and everything, but when they first attack, they make this turtle -looking thing called a phalanx, right?

And they attack in this phalanx position where all the shields, you've got the shields lined up next to each other and you just move like this, right?

Just scooting along. Your entire body is behind the shield. Because, guys, if you've got men of war coming after you and they've got their breastplates of righteousness and their belts of truth and their sandals of gospel of peace, they're ready.

They have confidence because of their sandals. They have righteousness, which means they're well -protected and they're coming after you with a purpose that this belt gives them.

So Satan knows this and he also happens to know the antidote for this. Watch any old movie with gladiators.

What's the antidote to a well -armored warrior? It's a itty -bitty tiny arrow that you throw through the sky from 100 yards back and it pierces the tiny places within the armor.

That's the antidote to a well -armored soldier. You don't have to go running up against them first.

That's a last resort. As they start advancing towards you, you first send the arrows and our enemy knows this and he's well -organized.

So the very first thing he's going to do with us when we get into the battle and we put on our target this belt that says, no,

I'm coming. I'm coming after you. He's going to send arrows our way. And so we're supposed to take up this shield of faith that we may wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

These darts are here in order that we might experience doubt.

These are darts of doubt. They're designed to make you think, all right,

I was ready to fight but now I'm not so sure. This usually comes in the form of some kind of attack, some kind of spiritual attack that you weren't expecting.

I've had this happen recently even in my own home. We had a spiritual attack when

I thought everything was good. And it made, it put me into a little bit of a tailspin. I was like, what?

I thought I was ready for this. All of a sudden I realized that Satan got his foot in the door somewhere.

And so we've got to be fully behind our shield. See guys, we're fighting a battle and this battle is not an easy battle.

This is a scary, hard battle. This is a battle where you've got to have the whole armor of God on and not only have the whole armor of God, then you're supposed to put a shield of faith that protects the entire armor of God as well.

You've got to put that shield in front so you're double protected. The shield of faith is what we cling to desperately as the entourage of attacks comes our way.

So many arrows at every little turn. It can be big. It can be small.

It can be lots. It can be little. It's going to happen and it's going to happen repeatedly because you don't just get one attack of arrows.

You get and then another and another. And what they used to do is they used to dip these arrows in tar and light them on fire and shoot them so that even if they didn't pierce you, all they had to do was nick your clothing and now you're a torch.

Like this is a very dangerous scenario. But the shield of faith will protect us from every fiery dart.

We're then supposed to put on the helmet of salvation and this too is one of those things that we take up for immediate readiness when we're rushing into battle.

See a soldier may put his shield down.

He may take his helmet off. He may even rest his sword but he's always wearing his belt and his breastplate and his shoes so that when the battle comes he takes up those things and charges into battle which is why we see the language as it is.

Take up the sword of the spirit. Put on the helmet of salvation.

So we put on this helmet of salvation. Well what is that? It can't just mean put on being saved because that would imply that you could take off being saved.

We can't do that. Turn with me to 1 Thessalonians 5 .8

But let us who are of the day be sober putting on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

So this isn't just putting on your salvation this is a hope of salvation. Well what is our hope of salvation?

See we were we were saved from the penalty of sin right? When we got saved that was our moment of notification as David likes to call it right?

We got notified of being saved. That's we don't have the penalty of sin in our lives anymore but we are currently being freed from the power of sin and that's our sanctification.

Right? We are working through that. So that's kind of nice. We know that we we have an end goal in mind that ultimately we want to be free from the power of sin in our lives.

So that's in and of itself gives us hope but even beyond that we have the hope of being freed from the presence of sin when we are in heaven with Christ which means the battle ultimately is already won.

It's a victorious battle which means you can run into battle with confidence knowing that God's got me.

I'm at peace with Him. I'm living in His truth. It balances me.

It keeps me centered and with that center of truth

I put on righteousness and I do it daily and if it starts to slip I clasp it shut and because I can do this

I know ultimately I will be freed from the power of sin in my life making my life better and I will be freed ultimately from the presence of sin in my life when

I'm in heaven with Jesus. That's the hope of our salvation. So when you put on that helmet what's it covering?

Your mind. Let that surround your mind. Let that be the thing that you put in front of you in the morning that not only do

I have do I have peace with God not only did He save me from my sins

I mean we're good. God and I we're good from His viewpoint not just mine but not only that but I also have the hope that I can make myself even seemingly better because He gave me the power to do so.

And when we see in Ephesians chapter 1 we're talking about the power of the Father that is a mighty power.

Finally the sword of the Spirit God has not given you a spirit of fear but a power and a love and of sound mind.

The sword is your primary form of attack and it tells us in verse 17 it is the word of God the word of God our

Bibles that is our sword we attack with it. We are supposed to as we saw in the other verse we're supposed to we're supposed to attack in power because God has given us a spirit of power we're supposed to attack in love which means we gotta keep in mind this is not about you know just obliterating the world with our pompous truths we don't

Bible thump what we do is we share what truth is there's a big difference you don't just beat people on the head this is why you're an evil person you know we share it all in love so we're supposed to be powerfully attacking in love and the way we do it is through the power of a sound mind controlling our actions and the only way we can activate all of this is with our sword of truth

God's word it is our primary our primary item our carryable item right ye are the light of the world this is in Matthew chapter 5

I believe Matthew chapter 5 verse 14 ye are the light of the world a city that is not on a hill cannot be hid neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel but on a candlestick and it giveth light unto all that are in the house let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father which is in heaven because ultimately it's his power that we do all this with we can't fight on our own we shouldn't try to fight on our own nor do we want to fight on our own that's not fun but we are well equipped to go fight if we will get in the word of God daily remind ourselves of what

God's done for us daily activate our own righteousness by the power that God has given us and walk in truth it will center us it will balance us it will allow us to stand firm so that when the attacks of the enemy come against us they're useless attacks the armor of God it's pretty cool